List Maker Help

To create your own list you must be registered and logged in.

Making a new list involves doing two things: (1) creating the
list
header, which you will see, later, on the main page listing
all
the
titles and descriptions; and (2) creating the list itself,
which you
will see once you open your list on its own page by selecting its title
from the main page list. List Maker combines both these steps, and
also lets you preview, edit, and post your new list when you're
satisfied with how it looks.

Creating the new list header
List Maker designates you as List Creator and presents you with a blank
template to fill in. You should confirm the default List Type
(playlist, album list, artist list) or change it. This choice
determines which page your list will show up on. Every new list
requires a Title and Description. You may also
optionally add Tags for your list. Tags may help someone find your list
when Searching for certain key words.

Creating the list itself
The unstructured text box allows you to use any format you want. For
examples, you can see four different formats in the lists Gator posted
before launch: rank order, playlist sequence, chronology, and tiers (in
Artist Lists, as templates for Pantheon-like lists).

You have three choices for how to start your list. If you start from a
blank template, List Maker prompts you to enter your list in a large
empty text box. You can create your list from scratch or you can
copy/paste any existing list into the text box as a starting point. If
you copy/paste from another website or a document created by most
software programs you may need to "clean" the list of non-text
characters, or convert it from a table to text, before it will look the
way you want.

Tips: (1) Microsoft Word has a Convert function in its Table menu which
converts text to table or table to text. You may have to experiment a
bit to figure how best to use it. (2) To replace varying amounts of
left-to-right space between items with a consistent format
I've found it handy to copy " -- " and then paste it between successive
elements in each entry. (3) List Maker accepts HTML tags.

You may find it most convenient to start your new list with a
copy of an existing list on the Alley. If you open the list you want to
copy, you'll see a
List Maker option to do just that.

Posting the list
Before expending too much energy on any list, it's a good idea to
Preview it, which will show you how the list will look when posted. You
can then cycle through Preview and Edit until you're happy with how it
looks. Then just click the "post" button.